


time for you and time for me

by riddledthrough



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hollywood, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:17:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16267835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riddledthrough/pseuds/riddledthrough
Summary: Stiles is a spiraling teen superstar struggling to rebrand. Derek's a starving artist whose slimy uncle talks him into a paparazzi gig. If Derek doesn't ruin Stiles's life, he might just end up saving it.





	1. a hard day's night

**Author's Note:**

> CW for drug abuse and references to sex while intoxicated.

At 12:01 a.m. on his eighteenth birthday, Stiles's contract with his management company expires.

Stiles snorts cocaine off some guy's collarbone in the bathroom and thinks,  _ I feel good in a special way. _

He climbs atop a table in a roiling, shouting crowd in someone’s dank Hollywood mansion and bellows, “ _ It’s been a hard day’s night, and I’ve been working like a dog! _ ” Sweating blurry strangers drenched in flashing neon lights howl their approval. It’s his own birthday party, and Stiles doesn’t recognize most of the faces in the crowd.

He is in love with a muscled music producer for four hours. The man is twenty years older but he doesn’t patronize Stiles once, and he gives Stiles half a handjob in the cab on the way to his apartment, and then fucks him twice; this guy is popping penis pills, Stiles thinks, and is delighted by his own alliteration. He falls asleep still messy and wakes up an hour later disoriented by the strange man and the strange bed. 

He calls a car, ignoring the dozens of texts and missed calls, and then nearly falls asleep in the producer’s shower. He is sore, and tired, and his head aches, and the world sways if he moves too fast. There’s a pap lurking beside the driveway gate. Stiles does not acknowledge him. He ducks into the car and rests his head against the tinted window and watches Los Angeles rush past him, all these people, so much money talent charm glitz glamour  _ bullshit _ \-- Stiles wishes he had his earphones with him so he could listen to  _ Martha My Dear _ , but he lost his latest pair sometime during the night _. _

_ When you find yourself in the thick of it, help yourself to a bit of what is all around you. _

Stiles means to take more than just a bit.

\--

Derek stares down at the slender stack of eight-by-eleven prints. The top photo, the one he’s been looking at for the past several minutes, shows Stilinski pressed against a dark car by a much older man, head tipped back to the night sky. Somehow the strong white arch of his neck is more provocative than the double bulge in the boy’s pants where the man is very obviously jerking him off.

 _Easy money_ , Peter had said.  _Just a few hours a day. I’ll text you tips, and you show up to snap a few pics._

Derek reminds himself that he hadn’t agreed right away. Initially he’d been appropriately disgusted by the proposition. He loved photography, planned to devote his life it, believed that paparazzi corrupted the art. That paparazzi photos were valued solely for their shock value, and not their beauty or story, offended him. But aside from that, sneaking photos of strangers, hounding celebrities, invading people’s privacy, sniffing out secrets and then selling them to the world – it was such an obviously filthy enterprise, and Derek had wanted nothing to do with it.

Until. Until his internship folded three months before his lease was up. And he’d never had a lot of money, but he’d never before had to choose between paying rent and eating. He’d never overdrawn his account so he could buy gas. He’d never worn an oversized jacket to the grocery store with every intention of stealing his lunch.

Peter must’ve scented Derek’s rising panic. A week earlier, at their regular lunch, he’d eyed his nephew and cleared his throat meaningfully. Derek was staring at the menu and thinking about his last twenty meals, each of which had consisted of either peanut butter or ramen, when Peter asked if he’d change his mind.

Derek was born for it, Peter said when Derek didn’t immediately respond; Derek was quiet, smart, quick, with a fantastic eye for photos. And he had a job in mind already. Derek would be paid soon. It was easy money, flexible schedule, doing work Derek already knew and enjoyed and was good at.

Peter paused. Never before had Derek let Peter get so far into his pitch. Yet still Derek did not voice the usual polite refusal.

Bluntly Peter said, “It’s the paparazzi or porn, kid. I know your jobs aren’t paying enough.”

Derek barely suppressed a flinch, thinking, How did Peter know? Derek’s clothes were clean and unfrayed, his posture was firm and straight. On the long bus ride to the restaurant, he’d put his license in his pocket to avoid having to open his wallet in front of Peter and risk displaying its barrenness.

Derek asked, “What would I have to do?”

“Not much. The job I have in mind will be a night next Thursday, six maybe eight hours. Hang around. Take photos of anything that interests me. While you’re on assignment, I’ll pay you for your time and gas, plus a bonus for each useable photo.”

“Let me think about it.”

“If you agree in the next twelve hours, I’ll give you a one thousand dollar advance.”

They didn’t talk about it for the rest of the lunch. Derek ate a $26 burger topped with a fried egg, bacon, cheddar, aioli (Hellman’s?), and kept forgetting to enjoy it. Afterwards Peter called him a ride home. As the car pulled up Peter suddenly embraced Derek, who unfroze a beat too late, and the hug dissolved awkwardly. Peter had taken Derek out to lunch every Wednesday since Derek arrived a month earlier, never late, no cancellations, and he texted sometimes throughout the week, stiffly worded messages asking if he had groceries or wanted tickets to an indie film festival -- but he’d never hugged Derek. At the last instant before the car door closed, Peter called out: “Let me know -- twelve hours!” 

At first Derek deliberately did not think about it. On the ride home he focused on messages and posts he’d dutifully ignored during lunch, or stared out the window. The car rolled out of West Lanes and through increasingly shabbier neighborhoods. Weeds sprouted from sidewalks, cracks crept across pavement, telephone poles leaned. Derek didn’t care about the wealth behind him or the poverty ahead of him -- he didn’t; he knew he didn’t. But. Since he’d lost the Orikani internship, it seemed like all he did was minimum wage service work and sleep. He’d come to this awful city three thousand miles from home to become a photographer, yet spent less than six hours taking photos in the past week. Derek didn’t want a nicer apartment or more meals out; he only wanted time and some slackening of the vice of anxiety. Peter’s offer was grimy but it was legal and it would grant Derek worlds of breathing room to refocus on his goals.

The driver let him out in front of a sagging two-storey yellow house, and Derek considered his feelings of shame as he passed through the rusted gate in the tilted chain link fence. He was ashamed because he already knew he’d take Peter’s offer. 

He did not text Peter before his Wednesday afternoon shift at the ice cream parlour, where he tried to be honest with himself about why he hated the work. His knuckles ached from proximity to the cold bins. He wore baggy plastic gloves and pinched sample spoons between the tips of his thumb and forefinger as he handed them across the counter, striving, according to his manager’s instructions, to minimize contact with customers. He was beginning to see the world not through the lens of a camera but through the lens of this hated job: everywhere he went, he thought about how many hours he’d have to work to afford something he wanted. Two hours of scooping ice cream to buy a burger; ninety-three to pay rent; fifteen minutes for bus fare.  

If lack of money was distorting his worldview and money could straighten it back out --

He texted Peter.

And here he is just one week later, leaning over two dozen photos and embroiled in a second moral crisis. Derek touches a finger to the image of Stilinski’s blazing face, the parted lips and squeezed-shut eyes, and wonders  how he can relish his new freedom if this is his means of escape . The boy was clearly fucked up last night -- stumbling down the steps as he came out of the house, saved from falling only by the steady arm around his waist.

Derek wonders: Should I have called 911 instead of taking pictures?

Stilinski is not out. Maybe he’s gay; maybe he’s bi. Maybe he was experimenting. Maybe -- Derek feels ill -- maybe he was drugged and date-raped and didn’t want or plan anything in these photographs. Stilinski is a teenager -- seventeen or eighteen years old. How dare Derek sell a photo that’ll launch an international tizzy over his sexuality?

He flips through the other photos. Stilinski backlit by the party as he exits the house;  Stilinski at 6 a.m. in rumpled clothes, stooped, eyes heavy-lidded; Stilinski slouching inside the cab, head tipped against the window, staring vacantly.

He puts the photos down on his stained, rickety, shitty table and turns his back on them. He finds a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, both unwashed, jams his feet into his running shoes, and fits his earphones into his ears.

Derek runs fast and hard. He tries to focus on his playlist -- Proclaimers, Cage the Elephant, Men Without Hats, Awolnation, songs he loves and has listened to a hundred times apiece. But the slender pale boy seems burned into his eyeballs. 

The LA sun is sweltering. He sweats. He pants. He hasn’t slept for thirty-two hours.

Derek has been a paparazzo for two days. Peter gave him an advance so he could pay his rent and phone bill and buy groceries. If he doesn’t hand off these photos, he’ll -- what? Find another Hollywood princeling to cheapen and ruin? Start emailing dick pics to porn casting directors?

Derek makes his decision when he’s four miles away from his apartment, and turns around.


	2. looking through a glass onion

 

Stiles's phone wakes him. Why the fuck isn’t his ringer turned off? He reaches blindly, yanks out the charging cord, and stares at the name. _Ralph Ennis_ . He knows Ennis can’t do anything anymore, Stiles _knows_ this, but he still feels the same sickly surge of dread.

He answers it. “Hello?”

“Stiles. This is a courtesy call. Are you awake?”

Ennis’s growly snappishness never fails to rouse Stiles completely. “Yeah,” he says.

“We just got a call from a pap rep about some photos that were taken of you last night. They’re extremely...tasteless.” Ennis laughs briefly before adding, “Lewd. Incriminating. Pick your word. He offered us a buyout before he reaches out to the media, but I had to tell him that Deucalion no longer manages you. He wanted to know if you’d like to purchase the photos personally.”

Stiles rubs his eyes. Typical fucking Ennis. There was that pap outside the gate this morning, but Stiles didn’t see any last night. So they photographed him leaving a music producer’s house early in the morning -- whatever, they could’ve been discussing the future of Stiles's singing career. “I don’t think so, Ennis. If I started buying every pap photo, I’d be out on the street in six weeks.”

Ennis snorts. “Doubtful. Stiles, you and I are both fully aware that I can’t tell you to do anything anymore, but I’m advising you -- as a friend -- to talk to this man. I’ll send you the photos. You can decide for yourself.”

 _Friend_. Wasn’t that hysterical. Stiles fights back his own petulance; he wants to say no just for the sake of saying no. Instead he says, “Fine.”

“I’ll send his number. Name’s Peter Hale. Good luck.”

“Sure.”

“And Stiles. Happy birthday.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” He hangs up.

Half a minute later, his phone alerts him to an email from Ennis. The subject is “Peter Hale” followed by a phone number. The attachments --

Fuck. _Fuck_ . Stiles sits up, clutching his phone in both hands. He was _certain_ there weren’t any paparazzi outside -- he’d checked through the peephole before he left the party and then scanned from the open doorway -- and maybe he’d been a bit fucked up, but Stiles has been watching out for paparazzi for half his life; he’s pretty adept at spotting the fuckers.

Stiles, palming some guy’s dick on the house steps.

Stiles, plastered to some guy’s side, kissing open-mouthed with his eyes shut.

Stiles, pressed up against a car, some guy jacking him off in his pants.

He’s still naked, and looking at these photos in the nude makes him feel exposed, vulnerable. His throat is tight; swallowing hurts.

How could he have been so careless? How could he have behaved like this outdoors?

It’s easy to dodge rumours about his sexuality so long as there’s no incontrovertible evidence. Heterosexuality is the accepted Hollywood default, and Stiles knows which bullshit gay stereotypes to avoid. He’s been photographed kissing girls and he dresses carelessly and can pass off suspicious photos as images of close friendship. People question but are easily silenced or laughed off.

If these pictures are published, there’ll be no more silence and a completely different kind of laughter.

Stiles gets out of bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants before digging his secondary phone out of the pocket of a hoodie. He uses it to dial Peter Hale. The last things he needs is the paparazzi knowing his personal phone number.

“This is Peter.”

“It’s Stilinski.”

Stiles hears a low, pleased chuckle and instantly despises Peter Hale. “Thought you might be calling. So. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Fucking _prick_ , Stiles thinks, seething -- but he speaks evenly. “The photos. I want to buy them. All of them. Exclusive rights.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Stilinski. The going price is one hundred thousand dollars.”

“Fine.”

“ _Each_.”

“What? What the _fuck_? How many are there?”

“Twenty-two marketable photos.”

For a second Stiles thinks it’ll be two hundred and twenty thousand, but no: two point two million dollars. He can afford it, of course. But.

He looks at the photo still open on his personal phone, of him against the cab, getting jerked off with his head tipped back and his eyes shut against the pleasure.  Objectively it’s a beautiful photo. It’ll ruin Stiles's life and massacre his career.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll pay it. I want them all, though. Every single fucking photo, and you have to destroy all your copies and give me the originals.”

He thinks: 2.2 million to keep these photos from getting out -- and he might as douse the cash in kerosene and set it ablaze. The photos have already been seen by at least four people, they’re on at least two phones, they’re on the Deucalion servers -- even if no one deliberately sends them out, someone will be hacked, eventually, and the photos will be sold and splashed across the world. All he’s doing is buying himself some time.

“So pleased to hear it,” Peter says. Smug fucking bastard. “I’ll send you my account information, and courier over the hardcopies. What’s your address?”

“Nice try,” says Stiles. “I’ll send someone to pick them up.”

Peter laughs. “You do that. Have a nice day, Mr. Stilinski. Oh -- and happy eighteenth.”

Stiles hangs up.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, a phone in each hand, Stiles takes stock of the day so far. Expired contract, alcohol, cocaine, a few hits of weed, a couple pink-and-blue pills, lots of sweaty dancing, sex (twice), paparazzi, and (he checks the time) four hours of sleep. Two calls with shitty men who wished him happy birthday, neither of them meaning it. It’s only 2 p.m. 

He opens his music app and sets his library to play on shuffle. Sometimes any Beatles song will do.

Reluctantly, he begins sorting through all the missed calls and texts and emails from the last fourteen hours.

An email from his dad -- he doesn’t feel up to reading it.

A series of missed calls from Lydia between three and four in the morning -- that must’ve been when he took off without letting her know. Texts, too, in all-caps, except the final, defeated message, which simply reads, _Just let me know you’re okay_. He texts her back his apologies and lots of heart-eye emojis.

Several dozen texts from acquaintances who shouldn't even have his number but are pretending they’re Stiles's best buds. The messages are riddled with exclamation points and hyper-happy demands to catch up sometime soon. He ignores all but a few -- a couple former costars he respects, a former director, his real estate agent.

His stylist, who adds that she’d totally leave Deucalion for him. Stiles tell her he’ll consider the offer, and means it.

Two missed calls and six texts from Scott. Stiles smiles for the first time all day and messages him back, saying he isn't well but will call tomorrow.

Stiles thinks about going back to bed, but he’s feeling anxious and twitchy, too wired to sleep or even follow a single thought for more than a few seconds. He reminds himself, sternly, for perhaps the hundredth time in the few hours he's spent awake today, that he's free, finally _free_. He can grow his hair to his shoulders or buzz it off. He could get a tattoo. He doesn’t have to wear Adidas to the airport. He can say anything he wants in an interview. No scoldings or talking points. No threats, no lectures, no more being talked down to or babied or baited or bullied. That might've been the last call he'll ever receive from Ennis. Deucalion has no more power over him.

And yet...he'd expected to be feeling more than this. His own numbness astonishes and infuriates him.

 _I told you about the fool on the_   _hill_ , John Lennon sings, upbeat, mocking him,  _I tell you man he living there still..._

Gritting his teeth, knowing he shouldn't look, he pulls up the photos again. He stares at the image of himself half-sprawled against the car, fly undone and mouth open, filthily, as he pants or gasps. What sorts of comments would this garner online? Speedily his mind generates a dozen options, then a dozen more. He imagines his agent saying, with the kind of exaggerated delicacy that only accentuates her real message, _I just don't think you're really the_ type _they have in mind._

If his career can't survive his sexuality, it will all have been for nothing -- his mom dying, suing his dad, the years in Deucalion's cage, all the humiliations and sacrifices and endings. All of it. For nothing.

The image begins to blur. Because his hand is shaking, or because his vision is fading?

Breathing is becoming difficult. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat. His lungs are too small: he can only suck in tiny gasps of air.

He tries to focus his mind. A song. A lyric. A tune. He’s trying to steady his breaths, but getting any less air will only panic him worse.

Stiles thinks of his mom. Thin and so, so pale -- he could trace a mysterious blue-green vein from her palm to her shoulder. She’d pet his hair with a trembling hand and croon,  _How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?_

He despises his helpless wheezing. He sounds like a small sick puppy keening for its mother. A nasty corner of his mind remains distant and rational, and it both loathes and resents Stiles's weakness.

And why is he even panicking? At least kissing a man is no longer in breach of contract. And the photos are buried. Maybe they'll stay buried. Maybe he'll finally learn some fucking self control. He doesn't  _have_ to have sex with men, does he?

_How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?_

He’s having a panic attack on his eighteenth birthday. It’s his eighteenth birthday, and he doubts his mom would recognize him if she saw him today. He’s certain she wouldn’t be proud of him.

Stiles learned a long time ago to isolate himself when he felt an attack coming on. He's never learnt to master the attacks, but he knows how to ride them out.

Slowly, Stiles uncurls his body until he’s lying flat on his back. He doesn’t open his eyes, his chest is still heaving and he’s still shaking, there are tears on his cheeks. He focuses on relaxing his toes. Just his toes. A pill would help. But his bottle is in his bathroom. Maybe he should stash emergency tablets everywhere so he can pop one wherever an attack downs him. His toes. If he can’t control his thoughts or his breathing or his life, at least he can control his toes. He focuses on relaxing his ankles.

When he can sit up again, he’s exhausted. Drained. He stands, goes to the kitchen, digs the codeine out of the back of his freezer, swallows one dry. He walks back to his bedroom. He plugs in his phone to charge, strips naked then crawls under the covers. It’s his eighteenth birthday. His ass hurts. His head hurts. His mom would hate him, his dad does hate him, and he’s alone.

Eventually, he falls asleep.

\--

Stiles dreams he's trapped in a large, bare, cold room with no windows and only one very small door, smaller than his torso. He wants desperately to get out, but the tiny doorknob won't turn, so he attacks the door bodily instead, punching and kicking, but it won't open, and his hands are beginning to bleed, and anyways, he thinks, how would I ever get out even if I did bust it down...

He surfaces gradually, but the racket of fist meeting wood remains. Someone is banging on his door. He checks his phone -- it's nearly dead, because he fell asleep with it unlocked, looking at the two-million-dollar photos. A decade in Hollywood has granted him the dubious gift of evaluating his physical form unselfconsciously, and with a bit of effort he's able to overlook his own porn star role and focus on the images' aesthetics. They're remarkable photos, and --

The banging is punctuated by a sharp  _thump_. Someone has kicked his door. "COMING!" he hollers, hauling himself out of bed. He leaves the phone in his room.

"You're lucky it's your fucking birthday, asshole," Jackson says when he finally opens the door, "or I'd beat you into the rug." But he yanks Stiles into a hug anyways. Stiles hugs him back, mildly impressed that Jackson's bespoke suit isn't splitting at the seams; it's at least a size too small. He's not too worried about Jackson's glaring. Jackson calls every variation of this expression  _pouting_  and believes it showcases his jaw to its best effect; he rarely stops scowling.

Lydia embraces him next, delicately, and her faint glower _does_ alarm him, a bit. She hadn't replied to his apology text. "Glad you're ok, babe," she says, a little subdued. "Looks live you've seen better days, though. Happy birthday." Her nails, he notices, are painted the exact same shade of blue as her shimmery catsuit. He's touched that they've dressed up for their three-person party. He's not even wearing a shirt.

It's a good night. Jackson and Lydia hang a glittery plastic  _HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY_ banner, and only rib him a little when he puts on  _The White Album_ while unwrapping their presents. Lydia's gift is the complete digitized  _National Geographic_ going back to 1888, and Jackson gives him a fuzzy pink toilet lid cover, "because your ass is my favourite thing about you, and I can't have you forgetting it," and they snort with laughter. Afterwards they pile into a corner of Stiles's massive couch, mostly on top of each other, and marathon half of a crime documentary series. They don't ask what he's going to do next, or how he's feeling about his new contract-free life, and he loves them for that. It's not perfect -- Lydia drinks a bit too much, and Jackson doesn't eat a thing in eight hours and makes them take a dozen selfies for his Instagram -- but it's pretty good.

And through it all, Stiles can't stop thinking of those damn photos, with their eerie black-grey-blue nighttime colour scheme and dramatic shadowing and throat-gripping intensity.

Long after his friends have fallen asleep, Stiles stays awake, still staring at the pictures. An idea blossoms.

Stiles is a creature of instinct. The only thing he's heeded regularly in the past ten years -- besides his fucking managers -- is his own gut.

Within a minute of making up his mind, he's typed out the email and sent it off.

\--

The next morning, it's Derek's turn to be woken by a ringing phone. He curses: it's his uncle. Derek wants very much not to pick up, but he does, because Peter lent him a stunning sum of money and this is his job now.

"Rise and shine, nephew mine," says Peter, before Derek can even say hello. "It's day one of your own personal Hollywood story. You won't  _believe_ who just offered you a job."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://riddledthrough.tumblr.com/)! I post fic snippets there, including bits of this work.


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